The grackles, the white-winged doves, and the house sparrows are building nests. At Building J, both the sparrows and the doves have selected the hollowed tops of concrete columns beneath the overhangs for good location, location, location. I also see sparrows squeezing between drain pipes and porch walls of houses. And you’ll always find house sparrow nests in the curves of the letters of signs on businesses. I took a photo of a nest draped in the E of SUPERCUTS.

These birds are opportunists, have adapted remarkably, sub-leasing structures humans build for their own homes and work. Adapting, surviving and reproducing, they are successful along with the people who live among them.

Some have adapted too well. In the 100-degree-plus temperatures of summer, you’ll see grackles in the parking lots of grocery stores looking for tidbits of human food. Some grackles limp with grotesque feet, deformed by the searing heat of the asphalt.

We too adapt for survival, for reproduction, to ensure the well being of our young. But we don’t want to be grackles, do we? Dodging vehicles and grocery carts? I sit in the traffic and look at the lines of us nose to cheek in our smoking vehicles and know that no, this is not necessary to survive.

And what if you are a bird who can’t digest Mac Fries, who builds lovely nests of bark from very old junipers, or other uncommon materials? What if the lighted signs, the lightposts, the garbage bins don’t look like opportunity, but like disaster?

You fly outward in search of your home.

You don’t want to be a parking-lot grackle with burned feet, living off Cheetos.